Cyril: [singing] Cheer up, Hamlet; chin up, Hamlet; buck up, you melancholy Dane! So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum. That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become! So wise up, Hamlet; rise up, Hamlet; perk up and sing a new refrain. Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui. Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see. And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is to be! You're driving poor Ophelia insane. So shut up, you rogue and peasant; grow up, it's most unpleasant; cheer up, you melancholy Dane!

Andy: Go for it, man.

Geoffrey Tennant: “Go for it, man!” These are the words a director likes to hear.

Oliver Welles: What’s the point with having sheep if there’s no bleating? Where’s the charm in that?

Geoffrey Tennant: I assure you I don't want to do anything weird with the head. As a matter of fact it was Oliver himself who requested that his flesh be removed, and that his skull be used in all future productions of Hamlet. So, you see, it's not weird, and, in fact, it is notarized.

Cyril: [singing] Call me superstitious or cowardly or weak, but I'll never play a character whose name one dare not speak. I'll play Hamlet in doublet and hose or either of the Dromios but, sorry, I won't play Mackers. I'll play Richard the Third with a hump and wig, or Henry the Eighth (that selfish pig) but, sorry, I don't do Mackers. Every soul who plays this role risks injury or death, I'd rather sweep the bloody stage than ever do Mac-you-know-who. So gimme King Lear, Cleopatra, Romeo, Juliet, doesn't mattra – I'll play them all for free. But I'd be crackers to take on Mackers. You see, I'm skittish about the Scottish tragedy. (Och, aye.)

Ellen Fanshaw: I'm not talking about people. I hate people just as much as you!

Richard Smith-Jones: What the hell are we going to do? I mean, I know what I'm going to have to do. I'm going to have to go to the Minister of Culture and beg for money like some kind of blind hurdler.

Geoffrey Tennant: I don't believe this! Oliver Welles is dead! I poured him in the river and swans ate him! What do I have to do to get this man out of my life?

Nahum: Is something bothering you?

Geoffrey Tennant: They want me to do Macbeth.

Nahum: Damn it!

Geoffrey Tennant: Why does that bother you?

Nahum: I do not like that play. It teaches us nothing.

Geoffrey Tennant: It teaches us about evil.

Nahum: No! It shows us evil, it's a portrait of a psychopath. Where I come from in Nigeria it is a familiar sight, I've had my fill of psychopaths.

Geoffrey: [after announcing the new season] There will be struggle. There will be sacrifice. There will be tears, there will be the occasional fistfight. And in the end, there will be transformation.

Geoffrey Tennant: There's not enough fear here. Actors should be frightened for their lives. That's when they do their best work.

Richard: Really?!

Geoffrey: Mm-hmm.

Richard: That's just like normal people!

Geoffrey: Mm-hmm!

Richard Smith-Jones: OK, how would you advertise?

Sanjay: Richard, I don't use that word.

Richard: Advertise?

Sanjay: Yes, that is not what we do here.

Richard: You don't do advertising?

Sanjay: Richard, people are tired of ads in all their forms. They don't believe anything we say and it doesn't work. We at Frog Hammer ask ourselves very simple things. Is it wondrous? Does it move you? Is it culturally authentic? We believe that people are sick of being lied to. If you use truth, you can sell people anything. If you want people to react, to feel, to buy, tell them the truth! The truth is the new lie.

Richard: Fuck it. You're hired.

Richard: So Nadine's neck is broken? Is that what you're saying?

Anna Conroy: Yes!

Richard: We'll have to find a replacement.

Anna: Yes! And her neck is broken! Which is much worse than having to find a replacement director!

Cyril: [singing] When life takes its toll, when fate treats you bad, you used to be king, but now you've been had, alone with your Fool, you think you'll go mad— it's nice to take a walk in the rain! A stomp through a storm is what I'd advise, when people you trust tell nothing but lies; and kidnap your friend and gouge out his eyes—it's nice to take a walk in the rain! Your older daughters are evil plotters; a pitter-patter shower will keep you sane. When all has been said and all have been slain, it's good to take a walk in the rain, for several hours. Helps to have a howl in the rain, without your clothes on. Nice to take a walk in the rain.

Darren Nichols: I must say, I've fallen in love with the musical genre. It's the art-form of the common man. If you want to communicate something with the proletariat, cover it in sequins and make it sing. It's noisy, vulgar and utterly meaningless—I love it!

Andrew McTeague: You know, I just got these fish and I can't, I can't stop looking at them. I find them oddly soothing. Fish live in the now, as they say. We can learn from the fish.

Darren Nichols: [giving direction during rehearsal] Megan, I'm going to stop you there. You're singing to David, the man you love, the man who pays you to have sex with him. Obviously the emotions contained within these relationships are complex.

Darren: Music is manipulative on a level few of us can fully appreciate. I visited a lab in Rotterdam and I saw a chimpanzee driven to a state of sexual ecstasy, simply by listening to a C major seventh chord played over and over. I saw, I saw it with my own eyes.

Darren: Sing the duet by yourself, let's see how that feels.

Geoffrey Tennant: Well, I have a little something that might cheer you up.